In my researching of various HEPA air purifiers, it has come time to take a look at Honeywell HEPA Air Purifiers. At first glance, they’re not particularly remarkable. They generally occupy the low end of the price spectrum, and have the features that you would expect, nothing more, nothing less.

That’s when it struck me just how exceedingly normal Honeywell HEPA Air Purifiers are. Look closer and you’ll notice…nothing. There’s no patented Honeywell this, nor do they even try to compare to any other brand directly. In fact, Honeywell HEPA Air Purifiers, even when just looking at that product, feels like a sort of afterthought of the rest of the company.

Then I looked further into the company, and it was suddenly very easy to see why. To say that Honeywell makes more than HEPA filter air purifiers would be akin to saying “The Earth is slightly useful to use humans”. The company has produced thermostats, heaters, electric motors, computers, cluster bombs, land mines, missile guidance systems, and napalm, among many other things.  Within the realm of HEPA, you can get both a True HEPA Air Purifier, and a HEPA-Type device, depending on your needs.

However, there is one enormous blemish on the company record, and it becomes particularly ironic if you are considering a Honeywell HEPA air purifier. To quote Wikipedia: “The United States Environmental Protection Agency states that no corporation has been linked to a greater number of Superfund toxic waste sites than has Honeywell. Honeywell ranks 44th in a list of U.S. corporations most responsible for air pollution, releasing more than 4.25 million kg (9.4 million pounds) of toxins per year into the air.”

Er.  Wow.  So it seems that Honeywell is creating some of the air pollution that its HEPA air purifiers then clean.  There’s another way to look at that, though.  Honeywell doesn’t have a particularly high employee death rate (that I could find), so that means they must be REALLY GOOD at air purification, right?  Not exactly something you’d want to include if you wrote any HEPA air purifier reviews, but, hey, it’s information nonetheless.

Commercialism rules all, though, and all of this matters very little when a family needs something.  If you’re looking to pick up a HEPA air purifier that you can be reasonably sure will be relatively dependable, and will have filters and other parts available for it for the foreseeable future, then Honeywell probably makes the best HEPA air purifier for you.

2 Comments »